Theme & Variations introduces a new topic each week, presenting a wide range of music associated with that theme. Drawn from a millennium of Western classical music, the selections are an eclectic mix of familiar favorites and rarities. Theme and Variations is produced locally in Discover Classical’s studios by host Joe Law.
This week you'll hear works containing a theme and variations movement. The music is by Ludwig van Beethoven, Joseph Haydn, Franz Schubert and William Walton.
This week's program will bring you music by six famous composers, all of it performed on instruments once owned by those composers: Ludwig van Beethoven, Frederic Chopin, Edvard Grieg, W. A. Mozart, Niccolo Paganini and Sergei Rachmaninoff.
In the 1790s, Joseph Haydn made two trips to London. This week you'll hear music composed for or during his second visit in 1794-95.
The music you'll hear this week was composed or premiered a century ago in 1923. It's by Bela Bartok, Darius Milhaud, Erwin Schulhoff, Richard Strauss, Igor Stravinsky, Germaine Tailleferre and Amadeo Vives.
It's time to celebrate the imminent arrival of summer with music inspired by that season. The composers are Samuel Barber, Frank Bridge, Frederick Delius, Mikhail Glinka, Joaquin Rodrigo and Lewis Spratlan. You'll also hear an anonymous thirteenth-century song welcoming summer and a collaborative set of variations on it by seven composers.
This week's program will bring you music by four composers at the intersection of two June events, the recap of Discover Classical's Top 100 Listener Favorites and LGBTQ Pride Month. The composers are Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland and P. I. Tchaikovsky.
